The Blue Sky II forum in 2006 will provide a venue for a critical assessment of the current science and technology taxonomies and metrics, in terms of their quality and usefulness to policy making, both in a national and international context. Ideally, it will contribute to developing a framework for indicators that addresses some of the issues described under the different themes of this forum.

The following background paper for Blue Sky II examines past and current efforts to measure science, technology and innovation indicators, how the role of these indicators has changed, and identifies new paths that could be explored.